And no, Mr Rubbo, librarians don’t ‘purchase books by English and American writers because they have got into the habit of doing so and because they perceive them as being safe’. They probably buy them because they’re what is wanted and needed by their users, i.e. for the same reason that they buy Australian books.

A more positive approach to the issues raised by Messrs Rubbo and Muller could be for Australian writers and publishers to initiate a vigorous marketing campaign for their products, rather than whingeing about unemployed publishers. In these days of limited budgets and general financial constraints (yes, they do exist in private schools, too) book buyers cannot afford to be too sentimental or chauvinistic about buying Australian, only because it is Australian. I, too, want to see Australian writers and publishers survive, but on their merits, not demerits.

Yours sincerely,

Roy Stall

Dear Editor,

Yes I would like to comment on the 1985 Children’s Book Awards (belatedly!).

The dependence of the writer on recognition by awards or prizes dispensed by literary boards, makes an uneasy connection between the judges and the judged.

A book doesn’t become better because it wins a prize, but the money awarded the author and the extra sales of the book, buys time for more writing.

John Hanrahan talks of the judges playing God; they seem to be like the Pope & the Vatican Council practising their infallibility of fallible literature.

There is no way an intangible thing like writing can be measured by an academic yardstick, time is the ultimate judge. But as authors as well as academics must live, pay the rent etc., prizes and grants should never be withheld on the subjective opinion of the judges.

Our watchwords should be ‘Let the children read’, ‘Let the authors live’, and ‘Let the judges be accountable’.

Dear Sir,

Your reviewer Brian Dibble refers to my book The Indian Seduction: A study of a cycle in French poetry (ABR, October 1985) as a ‘self published book by a jusqu’auboutiste’. So much for encouragement for self-publishing in Australia. The work is presented in clearly readable type and is amply illustrated with rare nineteenth-century prints.

Your reviewer then isolates three statements in the book which he proceeds to characterise as ‘silly claims’, evidently attributing the ideas conveyed therein entirely to me. In fact, these ideas originated with a number of well-known critics of French literature, as detailed in my book.

The first of these ‘claims’ relates to the preoccupation of the Parnassian School with Indian mythology and philosophy – a claim which is supported by numerous studies of that school and of its master Leconte de Lisle, such as those of Vianey, Martino, and Denommé. Many extracts from the openly Indianised poetry of the Parnassians are quoted in my book. The second ‘claim’ concerns the lack of a clear-cut distinction between the Parnassians and Symbolists, which is the opinion of the distinguished French critic Peyre. I pursued this concept to identify both the common ground and the distinguishing features between Parnassians and Symbolists; poetical dissertations on philosophical themes of Indian origin were identified by me as a significant aspect of the first of these categories and parallels in the poetic thought of the Parnassians and Symbolists occupy a substantial part of my work. The third ‘claim’ concerns the obsession with themes of Indian origin in those two most important movements of French poetry in the second half of the nineteenth century. The French critic Paul d’Armon lamented in 1885 that the French poets of the day had been carried away by ‘the religion of the Buddha’. Evidence presented in my work gives credence to this statement.

Your reviewer has ignored the central theme of my book, viz., the delineation of the presence of an Indian cycle in the poetry of the period under review. This cycle starts with the embrace of Indian myths and philosophy by the Parnassians, proceeds on to the more subtle exposition of the Hindu-Buddhist themes of Illusion (maya) and the Void (sunyata) by the Symbolists, develops into the pessimism of Laforgue with regard to nirvana and comes to an end with the open rejection of this Buddhist ideal by Claudel and by Valéry, whose celebrated poem Le Cimetière marin has been analysed by me as a deliberate rebuttal of the Indian concepts expounded by Leconte de Lisle.

An overt presentation of Indian themes is found in the poems of Leconte de Lisle, Ménard, Mendès, Fourcaud, Cazalis, Verlaine, and Laforgue, whilst Indian images are common in Baudelaire’s poems and Mallarmé produced a collection of Indian stories. The most alluring feature of the cycle was the attraction of the themes of Illusion and the Void.

My research also dwells on Baudelaire’s creation of a Ganges/Seine pair of opposites, which concept was adopted and pursued by other Symbolists, the place of Indian myths in Verlaine’s works, the impact of Gautier’s Indian inspired story Avatar on Rimbaud, Mallarmé’s admiration of Indian mythology and the relationship between his version of the Nata and Damayanti tale and his enigmatic work Un Coup de Dés.

The reluctance of your reviewer to acknowledge the significance of Indian themes in the poetic output of the era, despite the evidence presented in my work – evidence which includes supportive material from several well-known French literary critics – is extraordinary indeed. The National Times (28 June 1985) refers to my book as ‘the first text to, evaluate Indian influences of period and recommends it to the Orientalist, and the French newspaper Le Courrier Australien (10 October 1985) is equally as complimentary.

I stand by my thesis.

Dear Editor,

I enjoy Mark Rubbo’s column and was very interested in the comments he made in the December 1985 issue of Australian Book Review. I guess I would sum up the situation by saying that it’s a two-sided argument in which the players seldom speak to each other. Booksellers and librarians have always looked at each others’ activities with a degree of bewilderment.

Quoting Laurie Muller, Mark tells us that on the one hand the bookshop approach to publishing has often become trivialised. At the same time there is a need for public libraries to help put Australian publishing on a sound and profitable footing.

May I put forward a few comments on a topic that is usually only looked at in times of crisis:

1. It is generally accepted that a standard print run for new fiction is 1,000 to 3,000 copies. This I would suggest is a figure dominated by the supply side economists of the publishing companies. But what about demand? Excluding for the moment, the big prize winners, who has really decided what the market will be. It is generally stated by booksellers that the real money is often in the paperback sales. I would suggest that more research needs to be undertaken to ensure that print runs are not being geared up on the assumption that ‘someone’ will buy the hardback copies and get them out of the way for the serious business of making money via paperbacks. This is effectively dumping and the public library, by not always playing the game, is seen as the scapegoat.

2. Public libraries have a greater charter than to simply become another outlet for local publishing companies. This unspoken assumption; that if it comes via the Literature Board it must be good, is too simplistic. Most public libraries cater for extremely wide reading tastes but their shelves are still full of books that we were assured were going to be winners. We carry historic collections that provide balance based on some sort of working judgement. Conservative? Probably. Totally responsive to the next new publication? Probably not.

3. The suggestion that public libraries be enforced to buy a certain proportion from local sources is a noble sentiment. My research shows that in macro terms, public library buying habits are totally different to the retail market. However it begs the question – Why are so many Australian authors being edited, printed, bound, and distributed overseas? Is the local book publishing industry about to impose similar rules on authors? Laurie Muller also said, ‘Over the past decade, the publishing industry has burdened itself with some appallingly poor business habits.’ The examples that he cites are retail decisions, not library induced problems.

4. Public Lending Right was not mentioned in the article. We were told that, inter alia, Public Lending Right was set up to compensate the Australian author whose sales have been taken by the library. Clearly the examples put forward by Mark Rubbo do not confirm this trend. The Public Lending Right system, by its very existence, demonstrates that Australian libraries do buy local material, although it’s not necessarily the sort of material publishers say we should buy.

5. My preliminary research shows that many country librarians always show a preference for Australiana – often against their better judgement.

6. I would suggest that if publishers are going to look at ‘the problem’ they include the following:

i)    ask a few librarians

ii)   stop believing all your own hype.

In an industry where a title can be remaindered in one shop and sold at the RRP in another, where companies regularly change hands and representatives change jobs etc., the problem is not entirely in the public libraries field.

Dear Editor,

A Media Release from the National Book Council dated 29 January and announcing the short list for the National Book Council Awards for Australian Literature for 1985 contains a comment under the sub heading Background to the Prize, which is erroneous.

The comment says that the National Book Council has a history of pioneering innovative new writers and that ‘the NBC judges were the first to recognise acclaimed new writers such as Helen Garner (for Monkey Grip, McPhee Gribble, 1978) and David Foster (Moonlite, Macmillan, 1981).’

In fact David Foster shared The Age Book of the Year Awards for 1974 for The Pure Land. This was seven years before the NBC Judges ‘recognised’ him.

In 1977, Helen Garner’s novel Monkey Grip was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Awards for that year – one year before the NBC judges ‘recognised’ it.